A toast to good driving

Take heart, Uncle Ken, not all toasters made that "ticka-ticka" sound. That sound was made by a clockwork type mechanism to control time and not used in all types of automatic toasters.  The toasters of my memory were all silent; they used a clever arrangement of bi-metallic strips, springs, and levers to determine the level of "toastiness" of the bread.  They were very reliable, and any variance of the toast is likely due to pitted contacts or changes in spring tension, both easily remedied if you choose to do so.  Wikipedia, YouTube, and Google are your friends, and those old units can be hacked to ensure a long service life.

Another thing I learned while researching the "ticka-ticka" is that toast tastes good because of the Maillard Reaction, which I keep forgetting about but is very important when it comes to the flavor of food.

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Driverless cars are a stupendous technological achievement, but I wonder if they are another solution in search of a problem.  I'd like to see more testing under conditions more rigorous than well paved suburban routes.  Like NASCAR, for instance; run the Daytona 500 with driverless cars and see what happens.  If they can run that race at the same speeds as human drivers and finish without any crashes, well, then they might work out okay on public streets and highways.  I don't know what they'll do if a kid or dog runs out in the street, or hit a big pothole.  Insurance companies will go crazy in determining liability and who or what is at fault.  Is it the software?  Or is it a mechanical failure due to a faulty sensor?  Maybe it's a design flaw and a little moisture caused an optical sensor to fog up a little bit and the car didn't see that blind person crossing the street.  We won't have enough fingers to point the blame.

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The trend towards driverless cars indicate a cultural shift, in my opinion.  At one point, learning how to drive a car with skill and mastery was a matter of pride and not taken lightly nor easily achieved.  I used to judge a driver's skill by the ability to parallel park; if they can't park without banging into the bumpers of the other cars they are probably bad drivers, too, especially given the benefits of power steering and automatic transmissions.  And you don't need ten extra feet to squeeze into a parking  spot, but I speak as a 20th century dinosaur.

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A few posts ago Uncle Ken mentioned the many types of movies he didn't like, but no mention was made of the noir genre or heist/caper movies.  Do these past muster?  We seldom discuss films at the seminars, but I know he likes "dark" movies, whatever that means, and the works of some Korean directors in particular.

Maybe the reason we don't discuss many movies is because so many recent works are crap, all spectacle and no content.  It's like there are no new ideas and everything now is a different variation of the same old shit, and who cares?  It's been a long time since a movie knocked my socks off.  I'd be hard pressed to name one but Brad Bird's The Iron Giant comes to mind.

Another reason could be that movies are no longer viable as a story telling medium.  There is a trend toward episodic, long form stories, like The Sopranos or Game of Thrones.  Please note, I'm not equating popularity with quality in citing these examples.  But I'm reminded of the works of Charles Dickens, whose novels were originally published in a weekly serialized form.  Any thoughts, or is this topic not worth pursuing?